Wyse Prize for Dissertation Research

Courtesy of the William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology, Prof Henrietta Moore, we are pleased to announce a competition for the best proposal for an undergraduate dissertation falling within the remit of the Department’s three research tracks: Intimate Aspirations and the Ethics of Relationships, Resources: Natural, Conceptual, Human; and Sociality in Transformation. The winner will receive a prize of £300 which is to be spent on supporting research for their dissertation. This could involve travel costs, equipment costs, or the purchase of relevant books.

The deadline for this will be May 11th, 2012 – but we wanted to bring it to your attention immediately, as you start to mull over ideas for dissertation topics.

Please note the following:

1. Entrants should submit a composition of no more than 2 sides of A4 detailing and justifying the research questions they intend to pursue in their dissertation research.

2. To be eligible for the prize, the proposed work must engage substantively with one or more of the Departmental research tracks. Details can be found on the website at http://www.socanth.cam.ac.uk/research/

3. Dissertations that pursue other lines of enquiry will not be eligible for the prize, but are – of course – still eligible to be submitted as dissertations for the Part IIB Tripos examination.

4. The sole criteria for assessment will be the intellectual merit of the proposal, and the project’s relevance to the Department’s research strategy. No preference will be shown on the basis of the project’s overall cost, whether the research proposed is ‘library’ or ‘field’ based, or the entrant’s academic CV.

5. We recognise that research questions evolve over the course of the research process. Nevertheless, the winner will be expected to write a report and provide evidence (receipts/boarding passes/ticket stubs) to prove that they have made a serious effort to undertake the research proposed, even if additional or alternative intellectual concerns are reflected in the final dissertation submitted for examination. If such evidence is not provided, the winner will be asked to return the grant to the Department of Social Anthropology.

6. Proposals should be emailed to Dr Nick Long at njl34 [at] cam.ac.uk by 5pm on 11th May 2012. Late entries will not be eligible for the prize. Please DO NOT include your name in the proposal document, but include your name and college in the title of the document thus: SURNAME_COLLEGE_WyseProposal.doc.